TWNMM: I Love LA

I Love LA ..now that I've moved out.
Created: 02 May 2002

This is the webpage devoted to the I Love L.A. geocache.

It contains a lot of information, including digested logs of places people have found, and some pointers on what has and has not been acceptable.

I hope everybody has fun finding Los Angeles references in their hometown...

A Brief Discussion on What I'm Looking For..

When I first concieved the idea for this Locationless Cache, I was sitting in a local establisment in my current "hometown" of Phoenix that just happens to be named after a landmark in Los Angeles. I thought that there must be landmarks in other cities that bear the same names as places in Los Angeles. So, I created the cache.

I thought the idea was pretty straightforward, but I guess it isn't. I've had to post a very long winded clarification and also modify the cache description a couple of times. In brief, what I thought was obvious apparently wasn't.

I've had to delete a few entries that weren't appropriate. And, I've had one or two that were borderline, but I let 'em fly anyway.

So, here's what you can do to increase the likelyhood that your log of this virtual cache will stick.

First off, think "landmark." That's what I'm looking for, both in your local version and what the LA "prototype" is.

Also, the better you explain what it is you have found and how it ties into Los Angeles, the more fudge room I'm likely to give. Completeness counts, as does effort.

Lastly, don't be afraid to look at what others have done. I'm sure if you browse the logs you'll be more than able to find something similar in your neck of the woods.

Oh, and a word on "districts" versus "cities." A lot of people have tried to log places like "Cerritos" and "El Monte". These are not within the confines of Los Angeles proper, while they may be in Los Angeles County or in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitain area.

A suggestion: if you do a websearch for "$CITYNAME city council" and you get hits, it's not part of the City of Los Angeles. If you have questions, please feel free to drop me a line.

Okay, enough of that. On to the useful stuff!

When I first set up the cache, I was digesting logs into this page. This has become a herculean task, so I just scrapped the idea. As a result, I'm going to be a lot kinder on "duplicate entries".

Ones That Got Away

In the interest of showing examples of what ISN'T appropriate, here are some that were logged, but I've since deleted. My comments are in red following the log entries.

[Fri May 24 2001]
jrsk9 has added a log to your cache (I Love L.A. (Now That I've Moved Out)).

User comments:
UPS (as in United Parcel Service)...I know, I know, I was not very
original, but look at the pics and perhaps I can redeem myself with some
entertainment points.  South Carolina.  

Please refer to the last picture.  It's a 24 lb. block of marijuana at UPS
in Florence SC.  It was sent, with love, from Cerritos.  

[edit]

First off, the E-Mail reply:

Greetings.

I have deleted your log for "I Love LA". In addition to my personal feeling that it might be inappropriate, it also has nothing to do with the City of Los Angeles.

Cerritos is a suburb city about 30 miles south of downtown LA. It is not within official LA City Limits, and is an independent city with it's own city council and police department.

I also question the appropriateness of posting pictures of what might be considered evidence in a criminal trial to the geocaching.com website. I personally don't think it is appropriate, and it certanly isn't in the spirit of the virtual cache I created.

Please try to find a more appropriate place that has a direct Los Angeles city connection.

-Feedle

Further comment:

Oh, where to do I start on this one?

Crime scenes are not something that I think is appropriate to be posting pictures of on geocaching.com. Aside from that, you should have seen the lousy job he did trying to blur out the picture of the agent. It wasn't pretty.

If that wasn't enough, the cache log contained no GPS coordinates (required), and no picture of the logging user near the feature. The "feature" itself is not a place, mearly a piece of mail that contains a return address from Cerritos, CA. Buhbye.

---

 September 2 by snowboardersean (180 found)
N 41� 47.915 W 072� 28.394
The town bordering L.A. to the South is Vernon. My son is not standing in
Vernon, Califoria however. This is our home town - Vernon, Ct.

Vernon is not in the city of Los Angeles, therefore, this is not a valid log.

On a side note, does anyone know if anybody actually lives in Vernon?

---

 December 31, 2003 by Blonde Witch of East (83 found)
N 45° 16.440 W 066° 03.497
This movie theatre is called the Paramount and is located not far from where I work in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. It is on North King Street. The tie is in the name which is also the name of a community in L.A.

Another example of somebody not following directions. I challenged this person to find the LA tie-in to Paramount: there is one, that actually explains how the City of Paramount got it's name, but very much is relevant to the City of Los Angeles.

May 11 by Uncle-AL (93 found)
N 38° 34.965 W 121° 18.715
You can [delete] or [permanently encrypt] this log entry.
This one is a stretch, but hey... It's original!!!  The Disney studios, while
not actually *IN* LA, are right next door, in Beautiful downtown Burbank.
Up here, in Beautiful Downtown Rancho Cordova, CA, I found Disney Tile 
and Marble, which means one of two things....  Either  


A: The company is really diversifying, OR....

B: The company's lawyers haven't found out about these people yet, and haven't made them change their family name!!   

Thanks for the fun cache!!

Uncle AL from Sacramento 

[last edit: 5/11/2003 4:45:18 PM PST]

.. and it's doubly irritating when people imply that they have indeed read the instructions, and submit a crappy log anyway. Summarily deleted.

Ones That Almost Got Away

There have been a few that have come across that were close. Here's my justification for my decisions.

Tinseltown: Accepted

I was hesitant, at first, to allow this. In some ways, I felt that it might open up a whole floodgate of only marginally related crap (as opposed to the existing flood of marginally related crap). In the end, I decided to let it fly. The connection to Hollywood is obvious, and Hollywood is a part of the City of Angels.

The Palace Theatre/Theater: Accepted

This one required a lot less thought. The Palace Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles is a landmark: an old Vaudeville-era house that is an architectural landmark in the Theater District of LA. It is the last of it's kind: the oldest remaining Orpheum Vaudeville theatre anywhere. My mother (who, like me, was born in Los Angeles) used to navigate South Broadway by referencing this building, and I'm sure many other Angelenos of the 20's, 30's, and 40's did likewise.

What really sold me on allowing this log was the completeness of the entry. If you are considering logging something that might be borderline, you could learn a lot from the effort put in by "Show Me The Cache" in explaining the LA connection. It was truly the spirit of what I had intended when I created this cache. Kudos to "Show Me The Cache" for the effort.

i like honey

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ilovela.shtml, Updated: Friday, 09-Jan-2004 10:39:04 PST .